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CeCelia Antoinette, as Mama Janie, and Dana Lee, as Nahoma Tahara, in Bronzeville.

So, while we were in Los Angeles this summer, we saw the play Bronzeville with Danny Glover.

And by ‘with Danny Glover’ you don’t mean to say he was in the play.

No, I mean he was sitting next to us watching the play.

Ho-hum, just another day in the glamorous life of a blogging dog.

We should mention that Mr. Glover is a co-founder and longtime sponsor of the Robey Theater, which staged the production, and it was a bit of a coincidence that he sat next to us.

Sherry got a little schmoozy with ol’ Danny, huh?

Hmph! We had a very nice chat. He was so warm and funny–he treated everyone who came up to him like they were dearest friends.

Yeah, it was a real privilege to meet him.

Needless to say, you guys are hoping he does one of your scripts.

Needless to say.

Shall we talk about the play?

I’m for that. Bronzeville was written by Tim Toyama and Aaron Woolfolk, who were brought together by director and Robey co-founder Ben Guillory to realize Toyama’s idea for a play set in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo during World War II. According to the Robey website, Toyama felt he needed to partner with an African American writer to bring authenticity to the story of a black family from Mississippi who moves into the abandoned house of a Japanese family that has been evacuated to a concentration camp.

The collaboration really worked, because one of the strengths of the play is the rich portrayal of the two families and their contrasting cultures.

Right. The play has color and nuance that couldn’t be picked up just by reading a history book. The story was inspired by incidents that occurred from 1942 to 1945, when Japanese-Americans were evacuated from communities throughout the West Coast, supposedly because they were suspected of loyalty to the Emperor.

That image looks like something from the Jim Crow South, but the anti-Japanese feeling in the country was deep and pervasive.

Even Dr. Suess got in on the act:

He deeply regretted this cartoon later, but it illustrates how racist attitudes aren’t necessarily limited to the stereotypical bigot.

Most Americans have some knowledge of this shameful period in our history, but what few think about is what happened to the houses, businesses, and neighborhoods the Japanese evacuees left behind. In the case of Little Tokyo, they were rented out by whites to black families who had migrated west to find work in factories during the war effort. Once blacks had repopulated the area, they semi-officially renamed the community ‘Bronzeville.’

The way the old-timers describe it, it was like a little piece of Harlem, right there on the west coast, complete with jazz and blues clubs.

The play opens with young Hide, or Henry, Tahara, whose father was taken away weeks before as a spy. He tells a friend he won’t be joining him on the bus to Manzanar.

It seems Henry has been reading a little thing called the U.S. Constitution, and he refuses to bow to the injustice of forced removal. The friend, who is sifting through the remaining inventory of his camera store, can’t talk Henry out of his rash move, but he consoles himself by giving Henry one of his best cameras for safe keeping.

With a nice use of historic slides and audio, we transition to the Goodwin family–Jodie and Alice, their daughter “Princess,” Jodie’s brother Felix, and his mother Mama Janie. Just off the truck from Mississippi, they can’t believe their good fortune at finding a fully furnished, two-bedroom house.

Although they are a bit bemused by some of the furnishings–silk wall hangings, paper lamps, and what we later learn is a Shinto shrine to Henry’s deceased mother.

Aw, you gave it away. Their biggest surprise comes when Henry, almost starved after two months of hiding in the house, comes tumbling down the stairs.

The moral dilemma is whether to help Henry by allowing him to stay in what is really his house, or to protect the family by turning him in to the law.

Jodie, as the “man” of the house, wants to turn Henry in, but Mama Janie, who was born into slavery, reminds Jodie of the family history. She tells the story of an uncle who escaped slavery, only to be turned in by a law-abiding citizen so, in the end, he could be lynched.

Jodie acquiesces to his mother’s wishes, of course, and he gets one of the best laughs of the play when he complains that he can never win an argument with his mother because she always trumps him with some story bout slavery.

Yeah, there’s actually a lot of humor in the play, considering the heavy subject matter. The cast is as good with the comic moments as they are with the dramatic ones.

Another point of contention is the traditional shrine, mentioned earlier, to Henry’s mother. It’s quite prominent in the living room, and it doesn’t sit too well with the very Christian Mama Janie, or her daughter-in-law, Alice. Mama Janie gets a little freaked-out, too, when Henry performs one of his father’s favorite prayers to help the garden grow. But these apparent differences also highlight the similarities between the two families–the love of gardening, the respect for elders, and the deep religious feeling.

Henry becomes a part of the family, even contributing to the household when Felix gets him a job as photographer at the jazz club where he plays. But this causes problems, too.

Iman Milner & Jeff Manabat.

Princess becomes a little too close with Henry for Jodie’s comfort, and when she, Henry, and Felix get mixed up in a big fight at the club, Jodie does what he wanted to do from the beginning–he turns Henry in.

Ultimately, Henry can only avoid the concentration camp–and show his loyalty to America–by volunteering for one of the Japanese war units, many of which, like Henry’s, saw action in Italy.

The play builds to the tragedy we feared from the beginning–Henry’s death. But the really heart-rending moment comes when, after the war is over, Henry’s father returns to reclaim his home.

No blacks were allowed to buy the houses they moved into during the war, so once the Japanese were released from the camps, the blacks were evicted. This is when many African-Americans in Southern California moved to Compton and Watts.

The Goodwins are packing as fast as they can to avoid any confrontation with Mr. Tahara, but when he arrives–bent and shuffling like a man older than his years–instead of anger, he comes with gratitude for all the kindnesses the Goodwins showed his son, which Henry had written to him about.

The guilt the Goodwins feel over the betrayal is as unbearable as the sadness Mr. Tahara feels over the death of his son. As good as the rest of the cast is, when Dana Lee comes in for that final scene, he steals the show.

And that’s saying something, because CeCelia Antoinette as Mama Janie, Jeff Manabat as Henry, and all the rest of the cast are excellent. But when Dana Lee breaks down and cries, “I just want my boy back!” that was the moment for me.

May I add my two cents?

Please.

You know, generally, I prefer movies to the stage, but this performance showed me that a movie is no match for a really good stage production. When Henry’s father turns his back to the audience and prays–chanting and clapping his hands for all he has lost and gained–though his prayer is unintelligible to us, we in the audience really feel it because, in being there, we are eye witnesses in a way we can’t be watching a movie.

And we’re with the Goodwins as, one by one, they join in–even the guilt-ridden Jodie–clapping and rubbing their hands in unison with Mr. Tahara.

Metaphorically, we can never see things the same again. Just as the actors have tuned their backs on the audience, we too must turn our backs on the old way of seeing things.

Well said!

Unfortunately, Bronzeville’s run at the Robey has come to an end, and I don’t know of anywhere else in the country that it might be booked. So, yeah, you’ve read this long review, and now you can’t even see the play. But we were so moved by the performance, and so taken by the history it reveals, that we wanted to share it. We hope other theater companies will pick it up, because it is a story that needs to be told, and a story that any person with a heart will want to see.

We lost actress Karen Black yesterday, who died at age 74 after a long struggle with cancer. Although for today’s audience she may stir only vague recognition as a character actor, she was a defining figure of 1970s Hollywood, with key roles in such important films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, and Alfred Hitchcock’s last picture, The Family Plot . Although she worked with the biggest names in Hollywood and appeared in everything from prestigious failures like The Great Gatsby to commercial blockbusters like Airport 1975, ask anybody my age what they remember her most for, and you will likely hear of a little made-for-TV thriller called Trilogy of Terror. Written by sci-fi master and Twilight Zone alum Richard Matheson, Trilogy featured Black in four roles in three separate tales. The first two segments are little remembered, but the third, which had Black trapped in her apartment with a toothy African doll animated with the murderous spirit of a dead Zuni warrior, was the talk of the school cafeteria the next day. It was such unusual, and genuinely frightening, fare for TV of those days that I can still play back in my head the image of that little, knife-wielding warrior jumping out from under the sofa. It was ludicrous, of course, but Karen Black’s terrified responses to a little puppet on a stick sold it. RIP.

For the sixth time and counting, Hugh Jackman plays Marvel mutant superhero The Wolverine.

What the heck is a wolverine, anyway?

Like Lugosi and Dracula, or Karloff and Frankenstein, Hugh Jackman personifies The Wolverine, a.k.a. Logan. It’s hard to imagine any other actor playing the role, yet with high-profile appearances in pictures like The Prestige and Les Miserables, Jackman has somehow managed to avoid the typecasting trap many before him have fallen into.

Here’s a picture of a wolverine, if anybody is interested:

Hmm. Between the claws and the frowny-face, I definitely see a resemblance.

That’s the best you can do? I thought it actually had a pretty good story.

It does. which makes you wonder how it came out so muddled. A mega-wealthy Japanese industrialist offers Wolverine the “gift” of mortality in a ploy to steal his powers of regeneration so that he himself may live forever. The whole thing of Wolverine becoming vulnerable and facing real, life-threatening danger should have made for a more compelling film, but it’s weighed down with too many characters and confused motivations.

Like, what was the deal with the Ninja Guy? Whose side was he on? And all those ninjas dancing around and turning flips–they looked like extras from Beverly Hills Ninja.

The ninjas were oddly comical. And just to give an idea of what a head-scratcher this movie could be, we are specifically told at one point that Evil Dad (these characters do have actual names, but who cares?) is just “all right” as a swordsman. So when he gets in a fight with our super-powered hero, we expect him to go down pretty quick, right? Wrong. It soon becomes obvious the only way the regenerating Wolverine is going to beat this guy is if he wears out his sword slicing up Logan’s mutant hide.

Which made it all the more gracious of Wolvey to allow Evil Dad the “punishment” of living with himself.

And may I please ask, if the bad guys want Logan’s powers, why go through all the rigamarole of making him vulnerable and risking him getting killed, and then taking his powers, when they could have just taken the powers right off and let it go at that?

But then we would have missed the amazing three-hundred-mile-an-hour bullet train fight!

Yeah, that was pretty great. Totally unbelievable, but imaginative and entertaining.

I liked that the movie is set in Japan. That added some real flavor.

The tie-in to Nagasaki was nice, too–especially since they didn’t just drop it after the first reel.

Pardon me, Cecil B. DeMille, did you say, “The first reel?”

They still use that term.

Do they? Well, it’s an epic motion picture with colossal special effects and a swell supporting cast. The box office should be boffo.

I’ll ignore that and go with your mention of the supporting cast. Rila Fukushima, as Logan’s red-haired, pint-sized bodyguard, swings a mean sword.

I thought she should have kicked a little more butt, though.

Yeah, and Tao Okamoto was effectively poignant as the corporate heir caught in the middle. She showed she could hold her own in a fight, too, although some aspects of her role troubled me.

The love-interest bit? Didn’t you think she and Logan were actually kind of good together?

They were, except for two things: Hugh Jackman is old enough to be her father, and Logan is old enough to be her grandfather.

I never could figure out what her character was up to, exactly, but Viper was awesome. Also, she demonstrated once again the super-hero movie principle of “Pulverize the villain one time–no problem. Pulverize the villain later at a more plot-convenient time–instant death.”

Like this:

I’ll come right out and say that I not only recommend people go see this film; I really want people to go see it. We were fortunate enough to hear writer/director Ryan Coogler speak a few weeks ago at a Los Angeles Film Festival seminar, and I was deeply impressed.

I thought you were going to run up on stage and hug him.

I’m man enough to admit I wanted to. He came across as so genuine, thoughtful, and sincere–

Not to mention adorably shy–

He’s like the polite, hard-working neighbor’s kid parents secretly wish they could trade their own under-achieving kid for.

[Editor’s Note: This is a metaphorical statement. Any resemblance to actual, under-achieving kids of actual parents is purely coincidental.]

And while it’s become a cliche, since the Zimmerman trial, for urban youth of all races to proclaim, ‘I am Trayvon,’ Ryan grew up not far from where the film’s subject, Oscar Grant, was shot. He knows the neighborhood and its people, and he knows the pain they felt over the incident, because he felt it too, not as an outside observer but as one of them. When he said at the seminar that this is a personal story for him, that he could have been Oscar, it was clear to me he was speaking from the heart.

Absolutely. But we don’t want people to get the wrong idea. Fruitvale Station isn’t just some heart-on-the-sleeve message movie; it’s way too honest for that.

It sure is. Not to harp too much on the 27-year-old filmmaker’s age, but the film has a maturity of execution and viewpoint that is all too rare in today’s movie houses. It’s stylish without being flashy; gritty without being degrading; and it somehow manages to be very warm towards its characters without sugar-coating their flaws.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Fruitvale Station stars a very engaging Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African American who was fatally shot while in the custody of Oakland, CA, transit police early on New Years Day in 2009. The film also stars Octavia Spencer as his mother, and Melonie Diaz as his girlfriend and the mother of his young daughter.

The film opens with cell phone footage of the actual shooting, underscoring the sense of inevitability many audience members will likely bring into the theater. The bulk of what follows is a straightforward chronicle of Oscar Grant’s day, meticulously reconstructed from interviews Coogler conducted with family, friends, and eyewitnesses. One of the extraordinary things about this film is the community participation in its creation. Even BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit authority, whose officers were ultimately held responsible for the shooting, cooperated with the filming.

The movie really serves as a portrait of Oscar Grant, and he’s so fully realized onscreen as someone that you could imagine as a neighbor, family member, or friend, that–even if somehow you don’t like him–you still have to feel sad and outraged at his senseless death.

Jordan does a great job bringing to life a young man who has a good heart and a winning personality, who wants to turn his life around, but whose immaturity and impatience for forgiveness from those he has hurt often thwart his best intentions.

I thought a key moment was when his girlfriend learns he lost his job without telling her, because he thought he could go back after a couple of weeks and talk the manager into rehiring him. Pointing out that people don’t rehire people they fire just because you ask, she says he thinks life is joke.

One of the sad things about the film is that, although Oscar knows he has to straighten himself out, it’s clear he has no clue how to set his life on a sustainable course. That’s not so unusual for a twenty-two-year-old, but as the film shows, there is less room for error in life for those at the bottom of the social and economic ladder.

My favorite scene was the flashback to Oscar’s time in jail, when his mother visits him.

That was tremendous. When Oscar is taunted by a white inmate, the mother watches her loving baby boy transform so fully into a prison-hardened tough that he can’t even hear or see her sitting right in front of him. Even after he sits down and looks at her, Jordan is able to convey with his eyes that his mind is miles away, until it’s as if she suddenly appears out of nowhere and he’s happy to see her again.

Then it’s even more heart-breaking when the mother tells him she won’t be coming back, and he goes right back to being a little boy, begging for a hug as the guards drag him away.

It’s an Oscar-worthy moment for both Jordan and Octavia Spencer. Spencer beautifully conveys the helplessness the mother feels in protecting her child. Even her best advice–to take the BART on New Year’s Eve so Oscar won’t be driving and drinking, only leads to tragedy.

You hit on it when you mentioned inevitability a moment ago. As you watch the bad choices of Oscar’s life pile up, it’s hard not to see every move he makes as leading him straight to disaster.

It’s partly the way the film is constructed, and partly the sad familiarity of the thumbnail sketch of Oscar’s life–unwed father, dealing marijuana, time in jail, cheating on his girlfriend, losing his job. The fully fleshed-out characterization of Oscar takes him well beyond that stereotype, and it shows how the steps he was taking to turn things around were tragically cut short before he had a real chance to follow through on them.

This is not to imply that Oscar was in any way responsible for his own death.

No. In fact, when the showdown occurs, it is Oscar who is trying to calm everyone down. But that moment also shows the dilemma a black male in America too often faces–how one is to react, knowing the danger of talking back to police, yet burning with outrage at being singled out and abused. One thing the film made me think about was my own youthful encounters with the law and how protected I was from the direst consequences of what I said and did because of the color of my skin.

I’ll bet you were a real hard case.

Far from it, and the cops knew it. But would they have seen so readily how non-threatening I was if I had been black?

This would be a great movie to screen in classrooms, because of the discussions it will generate.

But with its artistry, humor, and emotional impact, anyone can appreciate Fruitvale Station as a piece of high-level entertainment.

Okay, so we’re pretty sure we saw James Cameron the other day, walking his dog on Beverly Drive.

It was amazing. The little fur-ball saved his life.

What are you talking about? All the dog did was walk along beside him on a leash.

Which I assume is why you didn’t run Cameron down with the car. You couldn’t risk hitting the dog.

Oh, come on, I don’t have anything against James Cameron. In fact, I’m working on a sci-fi script that would be perfect for him. It’s about a little Javanese boy who dives for pearls for a native fisherman who is being exploited by an international mining corporation. The boy once saved a dolphin he found stuck in a tuna net, and one day, when the boy is overcome by oil spewed from from a leaking offshore drilling rig, that very dolphin rescues him and takes him to the only place on Earth with the advanced medical knowledge to revive his lifeless body–the dolphin city under the sea!

Oh, man…

I should mention that the dolphin city is sustained by nutrients that flow into the sea from a river that has its source in the Javanese rain forest–which is being clear-cut by the very same corporation!

Look, making movies is tough, and everybody I’ve ever met out here gives it their all. I’m not into knocking anybody.

Titanic…

A movie with some terrific sequences. When the water starts overwhelming the ship–

The ‘Star of the Sea’…

And James Cameron really has his finger on the pulse of the movie going–

‘Unobtainium’…

All right! I hate Avatar and Titanic with the heat of a thousand Pandoran suns! They are fatuous, over-blown, effects-laden, monuments to lowest-common-denominator filmmaking.

But with some effective sequences and cutting-edge special effects.

But with some effective sequences and cutting-edge special effects. In any case, they are undoubtedly the two most overrated films in history.

Are we forgetting Shawshank Redemption is the highest-rated movie on IMDB?

That’s a rant for another day. And while we’re on it, Terminator II was no great shakes either.

The Abyss had some really intense sequences–and then the goofy aliens showed up.

Yet another two-and-a-half hours of my life I’ll never get back. But come on, James Cameron is clearly a very talented guy who supports some noble causes. And he obviously loves his dog.

And Jerry Lewis says…

So did Hitler!

That’s a nice shot. It has a real Nazis-next-door quality.

It’s amazing how many photos of Hitler and his dog are available online.

Which should tell you something about dogs.

Oh, like you wouldn’t suck up to anybody with a can of tuna. And not even dolphin-safe tuna!

Tab Hunter sucks up to no man. I would take the tuna, though. And the dolphins are on their own.

See? There’s a cat for you!

Oh, go eat a dog biscuit.

Oh, yeah? Well, I–uh–you know, a dog biscuit would be good right about now.

Stupid dog.

Actually, I think Tab has a point–

No! Tab never has a point!

I won’t go so far as to say that dogs always see the good in us, but they do see the human in us, and I think anyone who can relate to a dog must have some semblance of humanity in them, no matter how inhuman, or inhumane, they may be otherwise.

But who wouldn’t like a dog?

Ahem…

Hate to burst your bubble, buddy, but try Googling ‘I hate dogs.’

What?! They’ve even got a Facebook page!

And a logo:

Oh, that’s heart-breaking.

Well, consider the source. Here’s a sample post: “Its just a page i love animals ess Dogs i hv just created it for likes and nothing else dont get centi :-p Love Gods Creation 🙂 “

Oh, so even more so than dogs, they hate good grammar.

Interestingly, in two totally unscientific surveys on amplicate.com, 27% of respondents say they hate dogs, compared to 35% who say they hate James Cameron.

Come on! It can’t be that close!

I wouldn’t put much stock in either one of those numbers.

May I put in my two cents?

Hi Sherry–please do.

I know plenty of people who like Avatar, and plenty who hate Avatar, and they’re all perfectly lovely, but I don’t trust anybody who doesn’t like cats or dogs.

Amen.

And by the way, I’m not so sure that was James Cameron.

Really? You didn’t think he had that smug, king-of-the-world look about him?

Allowing for the fact that it was Beverly Hills, all I saw was a perfectly nice-looking man out for a morning walk with his dog.

You know, now that I think of it–James Cameron or not–that’s what I saw, too.